Beverage concentrates are blended with water in production to produce a beverage for consumption. The beverage is placed into small containers by filling machines, for delivery of the beverage to the consumer.
Soft drink syrups, juice concentrates, and other concentrates are blended with water during processing to form a beverage. From time to time, these lines are shut down and purged of the concentrate and beverage. The reasons for purging the filling line include cleaning the filling line at the end of a production run, and preparing the filling line for running a different type of concentrate. For example, it is very common for a soft drink filling line to run more than one flavor or type of soft drink. Accordingly, the syrup and soft drink must be cleaned from the filling line prior to introducing a different flavor of syrup into the filling line.
The filling line is cleaned by forcing water through the filling line to remove the syrup concentrate or beverage. Residual water remains within the filling line, meaning that when the filling line is restarted, the blended beverage initially exiting the filler has proportionately too much water. That is, the standard, and required, ratio of concentrate to water will be too low, due to the excess water which is present in the filling line from the cleaning or change over operation.
In the prior art, to eliminate this problem, the blended beverage is discarded until the standard and required blend ratio is reached. This method results in substantial waste and expense, due to the concentrate which is disposed of. Alternatively, the prior art has attempted to resolve this problem by taking into account the approximate amount of water left in the processor and filler, and modifying the initial blend ratio to account for the excess water which is present in the filling line. However, this method is not reliable in reaching the required blend ratio during start up.